FM 3-0 (Operations) Roll Out

[Dr Jack]

Interesting that FM 3-0 only uses the word "civilian" 7 times and in 4 of those cases refers to "civilian agencies."

I did a quick search of the FM 3-0 final draft -- and the word "civilian" appears 90 times; "civilian agencies" represent 18 of those hits. "Civil authorities" appears 16 times...

[Rob Thornton]

“There will be people who naturally will say, ‘If I can do high-end offense and defense, I can do any lesser kind of operations,’ ” he said. “What we have found through seven years is that is not the case.”

I’m not sure that is strictly a face value observation – I think it goes deeper – it speaks to leader assessments of training and employment. What I mean is that if a unit leader believes that all he needs proficiency in is lethal operations – without ever doing an assessment of conditions he is going to operate in, then its going to take him longer to adapt to the conditions as they are vs. those the leader wanted them to be – regardless of what his subordinates may be telling him. NSPD 44, DoD Directive 3000.05 and the Army Campaign Plan for Stability Operations are all linked and directive – the doctrine now reflects the decisions about the role of military force in other then strictly offensive or strictly defensive operations. It does not divorce the former from stability operations, it marries them – it says that these are all components of full spectrum operations and only by being prepared physically and mentally to conduct all components of full spectrum operations, and transition between them smoothly will we achieve the political objective – be it the one we began with, or the one that got adjusted as the war evolved.

I certainly agree that we are capable of adapting and adjusting at every level. Some of the most astute observations and initiatives have come from junior leaders – look at the some of the newest articles in the SWJ – the subjects are often on politics, culture and economics – they are being written by company grade leadership! I think we also have to put LTG Cladwell's comments in the greater context of some of the stuff he’s recently said, written about (and we’ve discussed here) – things like ensuring our soldiers and leaders can be free to communicate and compete with our enemies in the areas of ideas, or the role and authorities given to junior leaders who actually can conduct on the ground assessments. Remember who the article says he is addressing – Law Makers – those inside 495 – and who largely are limited to what they know about current military affairs by what they are told – by think tanks, pundits, special interest folks, staffers who may have had military service some time ago, but maybe not within the last 8 years (althugh I've met some who have in the HASC).

So its not just the “If I can do” – it’s also the resources and training – and mental energy that are attributed to the belief that doing one set of tasks exclusively automatically prepares me to do the other things I may be asked to do, and then stifling subordinate initiative to do anything else. That I think is the concern reflected in the remark.

One thing I wholly believe in is the ability of empowered leaders at all levels to conduct a good assessment of what needs to be done, and when given the authority and resources, they will tackle it. What I think the new 3-0 does is give us the doctrine to accept risk and empower ourselves – we can say “look our capstone manual says these are equally important and we must be full spectrum”. Equally important is all the other things that will drive across the DOTMLPF spectrum – the doctrine is an enabler. It bears witness to what many of us already believe – we are capable at all levels to take on a greater width and depth of missions then we’ve given ourselves credit for in the past, and now we have the doctrinal authority to do it – which cannot be undersold since it drives so much of the OTMLPF.

Remember,

In an interview, he called it a “blueprint to operate over the next 10 to 15 years.”

By that statement we are looking beyond - at least as beyond as we can reasonable do. To me, this statement says - we're in this for the long haul - there is no going back to the luxury of focusing exclusively on single components – be they in peace time or other. This also is in line with our assessment that “persistent conflict” does not end with a change in Administrations. I like this because it speaks to the pitfalls of life – the old “you may not have an interest in War, but War has an interest in you!” We can be rolling along post OIF and OEF, happily back in our comfort zone where authority is restricted (or at least restrained to what it was) and free to focus on the ways we think policy should employ us and then the heavy shoe of something messy drops – and we are scratching our heads wondering why we chose to abandon all those things we learned how to do in OIF and OEF.

I’ve got a piece I’m reading right now entitled “Pacification” that was copied and distributed up here at the SFA conference – its a compilation of lessons from Vietnam by those involved in the SFA to the South Vietnamese. I’m not sure I could have read it prior to a couple of years ago and assessed its value – but it could have been written yesterday. Its been available I’m sure – just few people wanted to look for it, or would have understood its importance in say 2001. It is more then just our ability to forget, its our ability to forget coupled with our desire to make things easier on ourselves, and to emphasize what we believe we are best at – regardless if that is the reality we must live in. Injecting reality where it cannot be ignored is paramount to how we go forward – it should be injected into everything we do.
Best Rob

[Rob Thornton]

On the walk up this morning I got to thinking about the challenges associated with putting forward good doctrine. In this case 3-0s challenges are that it most be descriptive enough so that no one component of the full spectrum is emphasized to the point where it becomes prescriptive – it must allow the user to determine where he places emphasis based on the conditions in which he and his unit must operate.

This is no small challenge, particularly given the impact of doctrine across the DOTMLPF spectrum, and the timelines we associate with doctrine. Its worth while I think to talk about how we communicate doctrine and what its various uses are. Recently SWC member Mike Innes put up the “Chaoplectic” article on the “Hybrid Wars” thread. Within this piece it talked about the various modes we use to explain things. It discussed the clock as the Neo-Classical model whereby we decided that the nature of “whole” of something could be discovered by examining its various parts. Whole scientific treatises emerged on the nature of the Universe as a result (although certainly some folks had contemplated it prior to the 18th Century). Just as important as allowing us as individuals to think about things – it allowed us to communicate ideas, and that allowed us to leverage each other’s ideas to get further then any one person unto themselves would be able.

Doctrine serves some similar functions, but also suffers from some of the same limitations. I’ve mentioned before that I thought one of the functions of doctrine was to try and take what might be described as “art” – or the intuitive decisions of a commander or leader to gain an advantage and place his enemy at a disadvantage – and make it into science – something that can be explained so that all of us may benefit from it. This is not new – we do this in all our endeavors – Donald Trump writes books on “how to make millions”, but it doesn’t guarantee that by reading it you will become one – you still have to apply the ideas, be in the conditions to which they can be applied, have the resources to take advantage of opportunities or recover from missteps, recognize opportunities and risk, etc. Doctrine I think is very similar – it provides a framework for actions to solve problems within conditions – it is not a silver bullet unto itself – or there is no success through osmosis.

It also must account for its audience – the broader and varied the audience, the less precise it can be. For example – I used the word component to describe a mental model offered by one of the figures in 3-0 used to depict the range of full spectrum operations. There is a tough call to be made when using a figure to illustrate what is by nature complex and more or less vague depending upon the conditions – where does one component begin and the other leave off for example? One of the things I do like about 3-0 is the use of multiple types of figures to communicate that complexity – however, even this is no guarantee that it user will not home in one in particular and become wedded to it – human nature is to boil down and simplify. Sometimes I lament that not enough people read Clausewitz – or that they only look to one aspect of what he wrote, picking a particular quote and building independent context around it and divorcing it from the rest of the work. Much has been written about why many prefer Jomini to the dead Prussian – I think its because the dead Swiss tried to boil it down to a set of principles that said if you do these things – you’ll be a success like the Corsican Bonaparte. Jomini made something very complex, that is interactive, and has a non-linear nature into something that it is not – however, he did understand we’d like it to be that way, and the principles he offered are useful – but only when placed in the context of the conditions that are subject to the nature of war. There is probably a balance to be struck between teaching "how" to think - Clausewitz, and "what" to think - Jomini - they are often simbiotic - and different folks require different measures of each - it allows us to get over blocks and humps.

This I think is the fundamental challenge of Army & Joint doctrine – how do you develop doctrine that empowers both the individual and the system to make the changes that keep it relevant in changing conditions? How do you make it so the science can be taken and processed and provide the basis for art? While I think there is both good and bad doctrine – even the best doctrine is going to be limited to how it is employed. I think it is necessary and has helped us become the Army we are – it touches things in ways I think most do not consider – often the ideas that go into doctrine are those that are spread throughout the force by other means. I heard someone remark recently after being exposed to 3-24 for the first time that he was surprised – it was pretty much what they’d been doing, but he’d never seen it linked together so that he could see the whole idea in its entirety – that is a pretty powerful remark.

Doctrine, when combined with access to various information technologies allows us to communicate – not only a finished product, but the process which produces it, and the opportunity to influence it consciously and subconsciously with like and competing ideas. 3-0 I think reflects this – now that its core ideas are in a releasable format – the process of implementing it, and providing feedback can shape the direction it takes.

Finally, the last challenge I think doctrine must address is relevancy outside the classroom - there is a challenge - in a classroom at the schoolhouse - there is the opportunity to introduce, reflect, confer, etc. in comparably benign conditions. However, doctrine should also address the leader or staff guy who requires some help at 0200 in the morning in conditions that don't remotely resemble the school house. These also should ideally be seen as one or the other - we want to find ways and places to introduce ideas when they can take root, then we want to be able to refer to those ideas in a range of conditions and make use of the context that was formed when the stakes are not so high.

Best, Rob

[William F. Owen]

I did a quick search of the FM 3-0 final draft -- and the word "civilian" appears 90 times; "civilian agencies" represent 18 of those hits. "Civil authorities" appears 16 times...

My mistake. Searched the wrong FM! Aplogies.

[Ken White]

and sleeve garters.

[TROUFION]

DO any of you have a link to the new FM 3-0?

[Ken White]

Dr. Jack said:

"I believe this is addressed in the introduction to FM 3-0 -- that subordinates must be trusted to act flexibly and adapt to the situation on the ground. This is one of the lessons of the past seven years..."

Good. However, that's been a tenet for the US Army for the over 50 years I've been intimately familiar with it -- correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is it's been ignored pretty much in the last 40 or so and that increasingly as time went on. Hopefully we'll reverse the trend.

Another question is why on earth is the idea that subordinates must be trusted to act flexibly and adapt to the situation on the ground can be touted as a lesson of the past seven years when we have over 200 years of US Army history that show that and far more knowledge of the issue on a worldwide and historical basis. I always found it interesting that I was more trusted as a young Marine Corporal responsible for 12 lives in Korea or as and Acting Sergeant at Fort Campbell in the mid 50s than I was years later as a fairly senior DAC responsible for an 80 plus bod staff section with no risk to life...

WM said several very correct things, one of which was this:

"Actually Ken, I think it is more correct to say there will always be too many generals because they are too interested in doing the work that should be left to their captains, lieutenants and senior NCOs."

That is too true, numbers matter. The Army has essentially held on to the number of Generals with which it ended WW II for over 60 years. There are too many for the size of the force and that's what causes them to micromanage (along with a skewed philosophy). Smart aggressive guys will find something to do. Too many Sergeant Majors, too

[Eden]

Ken, truer words rarely spoken. At one point during my last combat tour in Afghanistan we had more general officers working in the country than we had infantry companies. It seems to me if you look at our most successful counterinsurgency campaigns of the last forty years, they have all had a flat, light command structure. Could it be true that success is inversely proportional to the number of senior leaders intimately involved?

[MattC86]

Is there a comparable revision of Marine Corps doctrine in the works?

Matt